- the grams of carbs, fat and protein for each day. Calculate your daily average.
en calculate how many calories came from each macronutrient, and the
proportion that number is of your total intake.. For example, and purely for illustration purposes, over three weeks you may
have averaged , calories daily, and grams of protein, grams of
fat, and grams of carbs. e grams of protein equals calories
( × ), which is . of your total caloric intake ( divided by ,,
multiplied by ). If you do the same operations for fat, you get . of
total calories; and for carbs it comes to ..Optimizing your macronutrient percentages
. Nutritional fare for weight trainees has fashions, and bodybuilding in par-
ticular is notorious for extremes. For quite some years the low-carb diet was
fashionable, even for gaining size; and huge amounts of protein and fat were
consumed by some people. en there was the fat-and-cholesterol-are-evil
phase. en cholesterol started to lose some of its “bad guy” image, and in
some quarters there was a move back towards lower carbs and more fats, but
selected fats.. Stick to dietary moderation with no extremes among fat, protein and car-
bohydrates. Fine-tune the proportions according to how many calories you
need and what balance of the three food constituents makes you feel your
best. As a general recommendation, and as a starting point for individual
fine-tuning, consume of your calories as fat, a sufficient percentage to
supply your protein needs, and the balance as carbohydrates. And within
each macronutrient, get what you need from quality healthful food. Percent-
ages are only a part of the picture.. As an example, suppose you weigh pounds with a bodyfat of . at
gives you a lean body mass of about pounds. And suppose you are tar-
geting . grams of protein per pound of lean body mass, and , calories.
If you get of those calories from fat, that means , leaving you with a
balance of ,. For protein, multiply by ., which gives . grams
of protein daily. Multiply that by to convert to calories, i.e., . So the
total fat and protein caloric intake comes to ,, leaving a balance of ,
calories to be covered by carbohydrates. ese particular numbers come out
as fat, protein, carbohydrates. With less fat, the other percent-
ages would need to be higher. But going below fat could jeopardize your
muscle-building progress and possibly even your health.